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Total Dust Deposition Flux During Precipitation in Toyama, Japan, in the Spring of 2009: A Sensitivity Analysis with the NASA GEOS-5 ModelWe compared the observed total dust deposition fluxes during precipitation (TDP) mainly at Toyama in Japan during the period January - April 2009 with results available from four NASA GEOS-5 global model experiments. The modeled results were obtained from three previous experiments and carried out in one experiment, which were all driven by assimilated meteorology and simulating aerosol distributions for the time period. We focus mainly on the observations of two distinct TDP events, which were reported in Osada et al. (2011), at Toyama, Japan, in February (Event B) and March 2009 (Event C). Although all of our GEOS-5 simulations captured aspects of the observed TDP, we found that our low horizontal spatial resolution control experiment performed generally the worst. The other three experiments were run at a higher spatial resolution, with the first differing only in that respect from the control, the second adding imposed a prescribed corrected precipitation product, and the final experiment adding as well assimilation of aerosol optical depth based on MODIS observations. During Event C, the increased horizontal resolution could increase TDP with precipitation increase. There was no significant improvement, however, due to the imposition of the corrected precipitation product. The simulation that incorporated aerosol data assimilation performed was by far the best for this event, but even so could only reproduce less than half of the observed TDP despite the significantly increased atmospheric dust mass concentrations. All three of the high spatial resolution experiments had higher simulated precipitation at Toyama than was observed and that in the lower resolution control run. During Event B, the aerosol data assimilation run did not perform appreciably better than the other higher resolution simulations, suggesting that upstream conditions (i.e., upstream cloudiness), or vertical or horizontal misplacement of the dust plume did not allow for significant improvement in the simulated aerosol distributions. Furthermore, a detailed comparison of observed hourly precipitation and surface particulate mass concentration data suggests that the observed TDP during Event B was highly dependent on short periods of weak precipitation correlated with elevated dust surface concentrations, important details possibly not captured well in a current global model.
Document ID
20170003101
Acquisition Source
Goddard Space Flight Center
Document Type
Accepted Manuscript (Version with final changes)
Authors
Teppei J Yasunari
(Science Collaborator Greenbelt, MD, United States)
Peter R Colarco
(Goddard Space Flight Center Greenbelt, Maryland, United States)
William K M Lau
(Goddard Space Flight Center Greenbelt, Maryland, United States)
Kazuo Osada
(Nagoya University Nagoya, Japan)
Mizuka Kido
(Toyama Prefectural University Imizu, Japan)
Sarith P P Mahanama
(Science Systems and Applications (United States) Lanham, Maryland, United States)
Kyu-myong Kim
(Goddard Space Flight Center Greenbelt, Maryland, United States)
Arlindo M Da Silva
(Goddard Space Flight Center Greenbelt, Maryland, United States)
Date Acquired
April 6, 2017
Publication Date
August 13, 2015
Publication Information
Publication: Atmospheric Research
Publisher: Atmospheric Research
Volume: 167
Issue Publication Date: January 1, 2016
ISSN: 0169-8095
Subject Category
Geosciences (General)
Report/Patent Number
GSFC-E-DAA-TN41113
Funding Number(s)
CONTRACT_GRANT: NNG17HP01C
Distribution Limits
Public
Copyright
Public Use Permitted.
Keywords
Dust; Wet deposition; Numerical modeling; Japan; Precipitation; Aerosol
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